The Day She Came Back

by Amanda Prowse

  Victoria walked backwards until her legs found a chair and slumped down, shaking her head. It was one thing to have contact from a nutcase, but quite another for Daksha, one of the few people in the whole wide world she relied on – the person who had her back – to be adding credence to the mad, mad suggestion. For mad it must be, because the alternative was . . . the alternative was . . . unthinkable.

  ‘But my mum died,’ she managed. ‘My mum died when I was a baby and I have missed her every single day of my life!’ It felt cruel and wearing to have to be repeating this to her friend. ‘I missed having a mum. They say you don’t miss what you never had, but I know that’s not true because I have missed her. I’ve missed her so much.’

  ‘But what if she didn’t die? What if Sarah Hansen is your mum?’

  Victoria let her thoughts race.

  ‘It’s just not possible, Daks! It’s not! It’s completely ridiculous! It wouldn’t make any sense! Because if she wasn’t dead, why would Prim tell me she was? Why would Prim not want to see her in all that time? And if she were my mum, why would she stay away from me? Why would Grandpa and Prim lie to me? Why would everyone lie to me?’ She returned to this, the most hurtful premise of them all.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’ Daksha stood and wrapped her friend in a hug. ‘I don’t know, Vic, but I don’t think you should let this woman go back to Oslo without seeing her, even if it’s just for five minutes, to try to get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘I don’t like it. I’m scared, Daks,’ Victoria whispered, gripping her friend around the waist.

  ‘Because it’s scary, that’s why. Really scary.’ Daksha kissed her scalp and once again the dam broke its banks and Victoria’s tears flowed. It seemed her sad system of woe was filling almost faster than she could cope with today.

  She didn’t confess to her friend that buried beneath the total confusion that the woman’s arrival had brought her there was a sliver of happiness at the prospect that this woman just might be telling the truth.

  How? How would it even be possible? A mum! My mum! But it’s not possible! Don’t be so bloody stupid! It’s not possible!

  ‘Prim . . . Prim, please, please tell me you didn’t lie to me. I can’t even begin to . . . Oh, Daks, what if . . .’ The air felt very thin and her chest heaved.

  ‘It’s okay, Vic. Take deep breaths. That’s it, keep breathing.’

  She did as Daksha instructed.

  FIVE

  Victoria straightened the collar of her blouse and knocked on the door. She wiped the thin peppering of sweat from her top lip and coughed.

  ‘Victoria!’ Jim Melrose stood back to allow her entry. ‘I was very glad to get your message. I must say I didn’t think you would take me up on the offer quite so soon. But do come in! Come in! I thought it was a wonderful service yesterday. Really wonderful.’

  ‘Yes, yes, it was, thank you.’ Her mind raced. Was that only yesterday? It could have been weeks ago . . . Her head was swimming with the facts that were still crystallising in her mind, and the person she thought might help her make sense of the whole thing was the jolly, hairy vicar who now beamed at her.

  ‘Although I do have a confession to make: the lemon drizzle I promised is in short supply today, but we do have some fancy biscuits Mrs Melrose won in a raffle – they should keep us going! Come in! Come in!’ he repeated.

  She stepped past him into the narrow hallway, noting the rather austere peachy-coloured woodchip and a single wooden cross hanging by the door. She followed him into a cluttered study that smelled of dog and where piles of paper on various surfaces teetered and threatened to fall as she skirted them.

  ‘Sit down!’ He pointed at a rather saggy-based wingback chair where several flattened cushions were stacked, as if they could compensate for the dip in the upholstery. She sat down and yes, the chair was as uncomfortable as she had suspected and she was certain that a spring was digging into her thigh.

  ‘Now, first things first, can I get you a cup of tea?’ He clapped loudly from the other side of the imposing desk.

  ‘No, thank you.’ She was nervous, and the last thing she wanted to do was juggle a cup and saucer in her agitated state.

  ‘Okay, well, let’s get right to it. What is it you would like to talk about, Victoria? And no need to hurry. I can imagine that this is a very difficult time for you. Grief is debilitating and it affects no two people in the same way. But I do have some experience; it’s not unusual for people to sit in that very chair, trying to make sense of their loss.’ He smiled and sat back with his fingertips joined to form a pyramid against his chest.

  She exhaled. ‘I don’t know where to start, really.’

  ‘I think the beginning is always the best spot.’ He stared at her.

  Victoria took a deep breath and looked into her lap; getting started was a lot harder than she had thought. ‘It is partly about losing my gran, but it’s more than that.’ She smiled at him as anxiety tied her tongue. ‘It’s an odd one, but . . . a woman came to Prim’s funeral who I didn’t recognise and she came to the house afterwards, not inside, but she was in the garden.’ She paused, remembering how she had walked over to her at the lake. ‘And I know how crazy this sounds, but she told me . . . she told me she was my mum.’

  ‘Forgive me.’ He lowered his hands. ‘But I thought your mother passed away?’

  ‘I know.’ She looked up briefly. ‘Yes, she did. Or at least I thought she did. She did, I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know anything . . .’ She ran her fingers through her hair.

  ‘Take your time.’ He spoke kindly, and it helped.

  ‘There was something the woman said yesterday – about my name, my real name, and her handwriting, and the way she looked . . .’

  ‘I don’t really understand what you are saying to me.’ The vicar too was clearly struggling with the inference. ‘You think this woman is your mother?’

  ‘I’m not sure!’ Victoria bit her lip. ‘I don’t really understand it either, but the woman who turned up at the funeral came to the house again this morning and left a note. She has asked me to make contact with her, as she is only here for a short time, and I don’t know what to do and I wondered if you might know anything about it. I left a message for a man she was chatting to in the churchyard, but he hasn’t got back to me. I know Prim wasn’t a churchgoer, not really, but I thought if she might have told anyone about this, it would be you. Or her boyfriend, Gerald, but I thought I’d try you first.’ She hated the desperate, hopeful longing in her chest, wanting nothing more than answers from him, or anyone else for that matter.

  The vicar sat forward in the chair and shook his head, his expression now more solemn than jolly. ‘No. I don’t know anything about this. I heard from others that your mother had died when you were a baby. I think your grandfather might even have told me about the situation, but Prim and I never discussed it. She was a very private woman.’

  ‘Yes, she was.’

  ‘And you think there might be grounds to what this woman is claiming?’ he asked softly, with an unmistakable air of disbelief. And she understood; if she’d heard it, she too would think it implausible. God, she did find it implausible! And yet here she was.

  ‘I honestly don’t know what to make of it. I guess I felt there was something familiar about her when I met her and then, this morning, my best friend, Daksha, who’s really good at this type of thing, said she thought there might be something in it.’

  Jim Melrose drew breath and took his time forming his response. ‘In my job I see a lot of people, Victoria, who are grieving the loss of someone they loved. Your situation is even more poignant, as your grandma was effectively your whole family and you are very young. I think that there might be a tendency for some people in your situation to want to believe that this might be a possibility, because it would be the fairy-tale ending, wouldn’t it? To have your mother come back from the dead when you need her most. I’m sorry to say there are charlatans out there who are more than
aware of this. I have had some . . .’ He paused. ‘Heartbreaking conversations with people who have paid huge sums to so-called “psychics” to receive messages from those who have died. Of course, it all comes to nothing, it’s a con. I think if anyone did have a real gift, a vocation like that, then they would not be making money from it. They can take advantage of vulnerable people in the worst way. Because they give false hope.’ He looked wistful. ‘And I don’t want to presume or pry, but I think the assumption is that you are now a young woman of means.’

  She swallowed the inappropriate desire to laugh as nerves bit, glad Daksha was not within sight. The very phrase a woman of means made her feel like something out of a Jane Austen novel.

  The vicar continued. ‘I guess what I am saying is that there are a number of very obvious explanations and sometimes the most likely answers are not the most pleasing ones, not the ones we hope for. I am concerned that your grief and your understandable desire for this to be true might cloud the reality and I would hate to see you get hurt in any way, Victoria. I think you have enough going on right now.’

  ‘I’m not sure I do have a desire for it to be true!’ She shook her head defiantly, if not convincingly. ‘I think I hope it’s not true, but then if there’s the smallest chance that I could get to meet my mum . . .’ She held her head in her hands briefly. ‘I would hate to see me get hurt too, but what if the hurt comes because I find out that Prim has been lying to me my whole life? What then?’ The thought was enough to make her tears bloom.

  Jim Melrose held her eyeline. ‘And why would she have done that? Surely she, more than anyone, would have wanted nothing more than to be reunited with the daughter she mourned?’

  ‘I guess.’ She looked away, knowing she was more or less going to dismiss his advice. ‘But I think I need to find out.’

  ‘Well’ – he smiled a little stiffly now – ‘if you are going to meet her, make sure you do it in a public place and not alone. Take all sensible precautions and do not give her any personal information.’

  ‘I won’t. Thank you for seeing me today at such short notice.’

  ‘My door is always open.’ He stood to indicate the meeting was over.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Any time. And Victoria?’

  ‘Yes?’ She looked directly at him.

  ‘Prim was a good woman. She really was. And if anything should come to light, remember that.’

  ‘I will.’

  Victoria walked home with the vicar’s parting words playing on her mind, suggesting that even he didn’t discount the possibility entirely. She looked around and dawdled, partly to use the quiet commute as thinking time, hoping to order her maelstrom of thoughts, and also because, despite a deep sleep, she was bone tired.

  As she walked along the pavement, thinking also of the vicar’s note of caution, she thought she heard someone call her name. She ignored it in case she had imagined it or misheard. Today she found it hard to trust both her instinct and her hearing. Then she heard it again.

  ‘Victoria!’

  This time it was unmistakable. She turned in time to see Flynn McNamara as he caught up with her.

  ‘Thought it was you.’ He was panting a little after the run and, on another day, she would have felt ridiculously flattered that he might have put in this much effort just to walk with her. But the extreme excitement and flurry of joy in her gut that she had felt the last time she had seen him was muted. Unsurprising when she considered what had happened that very evening, and every day since . . .

  ‘How are you, Flynn? Getting ready for uni?’ She looked down, not caring about her frumpy brown sandals. Gone was the nervous, unnatural speech pattern and the desire to pepper her conversation with words that might make her seem a little more relevant. And the state of her hair and the possible allure of what she was wearing didn’t occur to her. She was calm because she could now see that this boy and her preoccupation with him over the last few years did not matter. Nothing mattered as much as the more pressing issues that dogged her: like recovering from the loss of Prim, trying to figure out whether Sarah Hansen could conceivably be her mother and concentrating on breathing, because with so much going on in her brain, with thoughts and doubts coming at her quicker and faster than she could swallow, she thought she might actually drown . . . her head was working at lightning speed and she wished it would all just – slow down.

  ‘Yeah, kind of. I go in a month. There’s not that much to do, really. Just pack a bag, buy some posters and try to figure out how to stop my little sister taking over my room the moment I shut the front door.’

  ‘I’d go for padlocks and a big, snarling dog.’

  He laughed, and the old Victoria would have used his laughter as a fuse to spark her self-confidence, but not today.

  ‘I like that. Padlocks and a big, snarling dog.’ He held her eyeline. ‘You didn’t come to the pub that night?’

  ‘Oh. No. I didn’t realise you were asking me, plus’ – she took a deep breath – ‘things have been a bit rubbish. My gran died.’ She detested saying it out loud, making it real, and she then cursed the tears that inevitably followed.

  ‘Oh shit! And she was like . . .’ He paused. ‘You don’t have a big family.’ He phrased it cautiously.

  ‘That’s right. The tiniest family imaginable. Just me now, actually.’

  ‘Shit!’ he said again, shaking his head as if this were beyond his comprehension. She was tempted to point out the plus side: no little sister waiting to steal her room meant no need of the investment in padlocks and snarling dogs.

  ‘That’s messed up.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’ She pictured Sarah Hansen’s note, and in her head saw a clock counting down. I leave tomorrow . . .

  ‘Well, look, I need to get the bus.’ He pointed along the street. ‘But come to the pub, or I could message you . . .’

  ‘Sure.’ She nodded, not sure what exactly she was agreeing to and genuinely cool in her response. ‘Flynn?’ she called as he balanced on the kerb, waiting for a break in the traffic.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you and Courtney, are you guys, like . . .’ She didn’t know what she was asking or why, but pictured the girl calling his name with such purpose.

  ‘No! No way!’ He laughed and curled his top lip, as if the very idea were distasteful. This gave her food for thought; maybe Courtney’s superpowers were not as strong as they had suspected.

  Victoria kicked off her sandals and slumped down into the vacant chair on the veranda next to Daksha, grateful as ever for her presence, knowing that she was the only thing that stood between her and an existence of total isolation. A thought that was unbearable. The two watched the lake, over which a cool breeze drifted, lifting the hair from their faces.

  This place . . . my place now . . . and yet I don’t even know if I want it, not without you. Oh, Prim – I wish we could talk and you could tell me what to do about Sarah Hansen! And if it is her, if she is my mum, I don’t think you can have known. You can’t have. I know you wouldn’t have lied to me about something like that . . . I know it!

  ‘So how did you get on with Mr Vicar?’ Her friend yawned.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Please stop with all the detail!’ Daksha held up a hand.

  It might only have been ten days or so since they had waved goodbye to August, but already the days had lost the heat of summer and were now pleasant – warm still, but with the gift of a cold snap at night to aid sleep – should a whirring brain ever calm long enough to allow it. She thought of Gerald and how Prim was his weather girl as well as his theatre partner and felt a stab of sadness at his loss. Prim was, after all, more than just hers. She picked up her phone and fired off a text.

  Bit cloudy today, Gerald. I would say summer definitely on the way out and autumn is around the corner.

  Hope you are okay today.

  Pop in any time.

  Victoria X

  ‘So come on! What did the vicar s
ay?’ Daksha urged.

  ‘I suppose nothing very helpful and everything I expected. How the whole Sarah Hansen thing might be a ruse, a con by someone interested now I am a “woman of means”.’

  ‘He did not say that!’ Daksha sat up.

  ‘He did. And he has a point. He said it might be what I want to believe, the fairy-tale ending and all that.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I think I just don’t know.’ She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, as irritated by her response as she knew her friend would be. ‘And that’s the truth.’

  ‘I don’t want to influence you either way.’ Daksha sighed. ‘It’s such a personal thing. I don’t want you to have regrets, but I also don’t want you to get hurt.’

  ‘God, Daks, I think I am going to have regrets either way.’

  ‘Possibly, but I know that if it was me, I couldn’t stand not to know. It would eat away at me. But then, I get the whole self-protection thing. And at the end of the day, I keep asking this question: would Prim have lied that your mum had died?’ She shook her head. ‘Of course she wouldn’t. It was her daughter, after all.’

  ‘That’s what I think. Which doesn’t help me make a decision on what to do – call her, don’t call her? See her, don’t see her?’ She rolled her eyes.

  ‘Well, I was thinking.’ Daksha’s considered, calm response showed a certainty that Victoria could only envy. ‘I would ask her for proof that she is who she says she is, and then, based on that proof or lack of, I would make my decision on what to do next.’